Traveling—especially the whole #vanlife version of traveling—does a lot to inspire me. Over the past two months along we’ve seen all kinds of interesting sights and explored all sorts if locations. I’ve been to ancient and mysterious structures, fabulous seaside mansions, and haunting historical sites. And technically I never left my home, since we were in the van the whole time. There’s something kind of awesome about exploring the world while having your own personal bathroom at hand.
One of the locations we visited a short time back is known as “the Viking Tower,” located in Newport, Rhode Island.
In my first Dan Kotler book, The Coelho Medallion, the Viking Tower got a very brief mention. It was one of several sites in the US that Kotler called out as potential evidence for the presence of Vikings in America. The structure is pretty ancient by American terms, standing in what is now a small and well-manicured public park near the coast.
I had heard about this structure years ago, and in that time I’ve read and watched a lot about it. There’s some controversy around its origins and even its age. At present, the consensus seems to be that it is actually an old windmill, presumably built in the 17th century.
You can learn more about it from this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_Tower_(Rhode_Island)
And my buddy and fellow thriller author, Nick Thacker, and I talked about the structure a bit on an upcoming episode of our podcast, Stuff That’s Real, That You Didn’t Know was Real, But Also Is Cool (we’ll let you off the hook, and you call it Stuff That’s Real Podcast for short). You can find the podcast and watch for that upcoming episode here: http://stuffthatsreal.com
I love topics like this one. The mystery. The history. The questions. Even the answers are intriguing, mostly because you can sense and see that there are those who are willing to ignore one set of facts in favor of another, all in the name of putting the questions to rest. That’s just good science, right there. It’s at least good thriller novel fodder.
Because whatever the real origin and history of the Viking Towner (or the Newport Tower, or the Old Stone Mill) might be, the fact that there is a haze of uncertainty and questions around it means its wide open for some novelist conjecture and what-if.
I mean… what if it really is a structure built by Vikings, in some pre-Columbian era of North America? What does that suggest about our history, both known and unknown?
Or what if it turns out that this really was an old mill, built by American settlers… what happened to them? Where did they go? Was this a Roanoke scenario, where a whole village of early settlers just vanished from the Earth? And if so, who was responsible, and why?
Why aren’t there any other structures dated to around the time of the Old Mill?
Why haven’t they found evidence of timbers or implements that would be associated with the mill?
What if their carbon dating of the mortar between stones was thrown off by environmental factors?
So… many… questions.
And where there are questions, there are stories.
My job, as a novelist, is to mine questions and mysteries for the story I can craft for my audience. And if I were to choose to write about the Viking Tower, I can already think of a half-dozen directions to take those stories. Dan Kotler would surely be intrigued, and so would I. And so, hopefully, would my readers.
If you happen to be one of those readers, my hope is you’re seeing a bit of the behind-the-scenes that goes into my thriller novels. This is how it happens. I stumble across something while traveling or doing research, I have questions, I go looking for answers, and when I don’t find any I start making some up. Because being a storyteller, I’m compelled to come up with some explanation for this mystery, and if I can’t find it in the real world then the only way to scratch that itch is to invent it.
I think the same is true for readers. It’s why I read thrillers and mysteries and books with intriguing questions at their heart, anyway. If an author presents me with an intriguing enough question, I’ll read to find the answer. It’s a satisfying symbiotic relationship.
For any authors who may have stumbled across this post, here’s the lesson at its heart: Your job, as the storyteller, is to pose the right question. If you ask the right question, then readers will buy and read your book to find the answer. So the more intriguing and nuanced the question, the better your chances of a sale.
The really good books, movies, television shows, and video games we consume have this at their core. It’s all about asking a question that gets the reader or viewer or player excited, and then delivering a satisfying answer to that question.
So, if you’re a writer, spend a little time tinkering and refining your question. See if you can boil it down to a line or two. That can be labeled as “your premise.”
If you’re a reader, then you’re already doing your part in the novel writing process. Chances are that if the question asked by the book isn’t good enough, you won’t bother picking it up. And if the answer the author gives you isn’t good enough, you’ll leave a bad review.
Such is the cycle of life.
Questions and answers.
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